By Delilah Kaufman, Staff Writer, Emerson College
Settling into my seat during my third viewing of Blue Is the Warmest Colour (which you should have seen by now, by the way, if I haven’t persuaded you otherwise), two things occurred to me: the first was that I was flanked on either side by my seventeen-year-old friend and my mother, and the second was that I was perfectly okay with their respective presences. The movie theater we were at in New York City just so happened to be the IFC Center, the cinema that decided that despite Blue’s NC-17 rating, they would admit high school-age viewers anyway; a statement on their website reads: “This is not a movie for young children, but it is our judgment that it is appropriate for mature, inquiring teenagers who are looking ahead to the emotional challenges and opportunities that adulthood holds.” My friend, then, came without obstacle and came because she was interested. My mother came because, as she put it, “I really have nothing better to do and I really miss seeing lesbian sex on Boardwalk Empire.”
It’s interesting as it is that I can talk to my mom about lesbian sex without breaking a sweat. It’s even more interesting that I can see a movie with her that shows it and I’m not even miffed. Of course, the rising popularity of gay characters on television and in movies is to be thanked, but I’m not complaining. This summer my mother and I watched Orange Is the New Black, the most lesbian-centric television series since The L Word. My mother, having years ago accepted her queer daughter (yours truly), readily rooted for the gay relationships between the show’s female characters and expressed disdain for anything remotely heterosexual. Consequently, all the sex in the series was not an issue, and while I at first battled the understandable embarrassment of a teenage girl watching staged sex with her mother, it went away quickly. Point blank: my mom liked the show, and I was satisfied that she did. She never once complained about the sex nor ever suggested that it made her feel uncomfortable, which is to say I’m either lucky to have a mother that cool or unfortunate that I have a mother without boundaries. But I don’t think I care whichever one it is.
Somewhere along the non-stop lesbian dialogue I always seemed to be having with my mother, she suggested I watch a film called The Children’s Hour. Based on the 1934 play of the same name by Lillian Hellman, the 1961 film stars Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine as headmistresses of a private school for girls; when one belligerent
student is punished for her misbehavior, she spreads a rumor that Hepburn and MacLaine’s characters are in a lesbian relationship together. I have certainly seen many LGBTQ films since I figured out what ‘gay’ was, but of course, the bulk of them were all contemporary. When my mother introduced me to The Children’s Hour (which I watched one weekday night, alone in my room, toward the end of 10th grade), I was disoriented by the notion of a film dealing with queer characters that was half a century old. This was a film that essentially captured the aesthetic of the early 1960s: here you have Audrey Hepburn, leading lady extraordinaire, in a starring role opposite an equally
fantastic Shirley MacLaine—but instead of either playing lavish ladies draped in pearls, their characters are quite plain, ordinary women thrown into turmoil who must combat controversy or else risk losing everything. In a twist, MacLaine’s character does actually have romantic feelings for Hepburn’s, and the rumors of their alleged relationship lead MacLaine to commit suicide. What makes the film especially unique is Hepburn’s reaction to her friend’s death; she’s hurt and confused, and rather than being disgusted, she is sympathetic. The film ends with Hepburn walking away from her fiancé, suggesting that her companionship with MacLain (even though only platonic on her side) holds more value than the prospect of a “normal”, reputation-saving marriage.
I wouldn’t venture to say The Children’s Hour is the first of its kind because the truth is, I don’t know if it is. Let me remind you that I had never even heard of the film until my mother recommended it to me, and try as I might to be a true cinephile and watch all movies regardless of when they’re made, queer cinema, to me, is only a very contemporary thing. When I think of an LGBTQ film, it’s usually something that’s been made in the last twenty years, and anything made prior that features a queer character tends to only characterize them. The Children’s Hour is something of a special exception, then, because I wouldn’t have known about it had my mother not told me, and similarly—as I later learned—my mother wouldn’t have known about the film unless she hadn’t taken an acting class in college that performed scenes from the play. Some thirty years later, though, she was able to remember it and pass it on, and maybe it has something to do with watching a little lesbian pseudo-porn with her daughter.
I’d like to think that films such as Blue Is the Warmest Color and The Children’s Hour represent opposite ends of a timeline. The Children’s Hour comes first, of course, positioning itself at the end of 1961; 52 years later comes Blue Is the Warmest Color, a film so entirely different and yet very much the same. Both deal with the woes of sexuality and female companionship, in both the platonic and romantic senses. Both are very self-aware and contextualize themselves in what makes them controversial. You don’t need me to tell you that I think both are very important films, and then on a more personal stance, how very important they are to me: if The Children’s Hour was my mother’s gift to me, then Blue Is the Warmest Color is my gift to her. And while portrayals of lesbianism in media have come a long way since 1961, with the risqué replacing the taboo, it’s proof that films such as The Children’s Hour were successful in flipping the stigma and laying the groundwork of queer cinema—and thus television, and then mainstream media as a whole.
Delilah Kaufman is a Writing for Film and Television major at Emerson College. Hailing from New York City, she is a cat enthusiast, addicted to Mad Men, and can fit her whole fist in her mouth. You can find Delilah on Twitter.
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